Unless you were bed ridden with a nasty cold yesterday or live somewhere 'rural' with no modern technology (in which case: how are you reading this?) then you'll know the internet didn't just go down yesterday - it yelled timber.

A key internet traffic firm in the US called Dyn had its server infrastructure hit by three Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) - when a web service is intentionally overwhelmed by things like junk traffic.

Dyn's customers - Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Soundcloud and PayPal, just to name a few - were all affected as users across parts of the US and Europe found it hard to reach them during the cyber ambush, which lasted around two hours.

At the time, it was unknown where the DDoS attacks came from, but now it's been revealed that one of the attackers could have been... you.

Security firm Flashpoint (via the BBC) has confirmed that thousands of smart devices infected with a malware called Mirai were used to bombard Dyn with junk.

And the thing about Mirai is, you have no idea if it's on your device. Many of the devices involved in the attack are reported to be from Chinese manufacturers, with easy to guess usernames and passwords that let hackers get into your device and mess things around.

The scary part is that the vast majority of people won't be able to access the areas the hackers can, meaning they have no way to change their passwords and protect their devices from being used as a cyber weapon. Again.